Lady of Fortune (7 page)

Dougal frowned at her. ‘You're asking me to skyte off? To give in, and let Robert have his way?'

‘You'll not beat him on his own ground,' said Effie.

Dougal thrust his hands into his pockets, and stared out at the snow. ‘If only I'd been born first,' he said.

‘You think that would have made any difference?' Effie asked him. She stood up, and walked across to him, her black Sunday dress sweeping the carpet. She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder as if it were an award of sympathy. ‘Why don't you go to see father now, and suggest that you should move to London? Tell him you're sorry. He deserves that much, however hard he's been on you. You did lose your temper over luncheon, didn't you?'

‘Well, I suppose so. But, Effie, I don't want to go to London. The whole heart of Watson's Bank is here, in Edinburgh. If I go to London, I could be there for the rest of my days, with no promotion. I can see what I want to do with the bank. I can
feel
it in my bones. I want it to build up a reputation for backing those odd fellows with bright ideas. The inventors, you know; and the bright commercial boys. But I just feel powerless to do anything about it, the way Robert vetoes everything I suggest. How can I fight him, unless I'm here?'

Effie looked at him for a long time. Her pale, oval face was framed by her neat white lace collar, and by the curved patterns of dim light which penetrated the dining-room from the snowy square outside.

‘Robert's
my
brother, too, you know,' she reminded him. ‘I love him in my own way; as he does me. And that's why I can see that neither of you will ever come to terms, not as long as you're working in the same bank in the same city. You've got to get out, Dougal, for your own sake and for Robert's sake; but, most of all, for mother's sake. I do believe that father frightens her more than any of us know.'

‘Frightens her?' said Dougal. It was plain that he didn't really understand what she meant; and that it had never occurred to him, as sensitive as he was, that his mother could be frightened of anything. Hadn't it been his mother who, with warm breath and soothing fingers, had dissipated his childhood fears of the hag-like glaistigs, who were supposed to ride on broomsticks and bathe their own demonic children in the blood of good Edinburgh boys like Dougal? Hadn't his mother always been calm and loving, as mothers always are in the presence of their younger sons?

And yet, he must have had some suspicions, because he
said to Effie, ‘Aye, well, I suppose father frightens all of us. Even Robert.'

‘
Especially
Robert.'

‘Well, maybe.' Dougal took hold of Effie's arms and squeezed them affectionately. ‘I know you're making good sense, Effie. You've always been a feat young lass, even for a sister. But it's a difficult thing for a fellow to do. Run out on himself, and his family.'

‘You can't stay, Dougal. You know that.'

Dougal didn't let go of her arms; but he looked away, and for the very first time Effie saw in his face some of the effort it had cost him to be as vigorous and light-hearted as he always was. To be a younger brother was difficult enough. To be Robert's younger brother, and Thomas Watson's younger son, was like being the dog-minder at a circus, or the horse-piss-bucketer in a disreputable trio of travelling saltimbancos.

‘Aye, well, I'll probably go,' said Dougal softly, as if he were talking to himself.

‘Would it make it easier if I were to come with you?' Effie asked him.

‘How could you? Father would never let you go.'

‘I could say that I wanted to spend a week with Auntie Maisie, in Putney.'

‘Och, he wouldn't allow it.'

‘Mother could persuade him, I'm sure. I know she could. She could tell him that you would see me safely down; and that Uncle Henry would put me safely on to the train back.'

‘But would you stay with them, really?'

Effie shook her head.

‘Then where? You wouldn't run away from home for good.'

‘Wouldn't I?' Effie asked him. Her cheeks flushed pink; and in spite of her determination to stay calm, and orderly, she felt her scalp prickling with excitement, as if someone had tied a tight band around it.

Dougal said, ‘Well, if you mean what you say, I think you've something to teach me about being bold.'

‘I'm as frightened as you are,' Effie said. ‘But think of it! If only I could! I've had a grien to see London ever since I was tiny! We could visit King Edward!'

Dougal gave an uncomfortable laugh. ‘I hope you're not being too hasty, yourself,' he told her.

‘Hasty?' she said, mouthing the word in a whisper. ‘No. I've been thinking about this since I was old enough to think. Edinburgh's my home; and always will be. My heart will always be here. But I want to travel, Dougal, so much. I need to. I want to see the world; and, most of all, I want to mix with famous folk. Dukes and princes. Actors. Great generals. Millionaires. Kings.'

‘Kings!' said Dougal. And somehow the naive glory of her imagination brought him closer to her, because he held her tight for a moment, and squeezed her. On the lapels of his black Sunday-best coat, she could smell the sneeshin he took. Father didn't allow smoking in the house; he said it ‘reeked of red-peats', and that was why Dougal usually had to resort to Smith's snuff, or occasionally to Gallaher's Hammerhead sixpenny plug, with the juice spat discreetly into the geranium pots.

‘We've trusted each other always, haven't we, you and I?' Dougal said. ‘I love you, Effie, for the finest sister a fellow ever had.'

‘And I you,' Effie told him. ‘But it can't go on, the way things are in this house. Every time you and Robert argue, it's mother who has to take the blame. One day, it's going to break her spirit. She's not so strong.'

Dougal nodded, silently. ‘I'll have a word with father later, when he's cooled down.'

‘He'll probably be pleased to see you go.'

‘Do you think so?' asked Dougal, ironically. ‘Well, I don't know. What will he have to grumble about when there's nobody here but Robert and mother? He might have said that he wants me out of the house beforetimes. But I wonder what he's going to say when I tell him that I really want to pack my bags and leave him. He's the perversest of men, you know.'

Effie kissed his cheek. ‘For mother's sake, Dougal – please.'

Dougal looked around the dining-room, as if he half-expected the answer to his problems to be perched, like a canary, on the picture-rail. Then he said, ‘Aye, I will. It's probably time I struck out anyway, and made my own fortune.'

Effie remained in the dining-room long after he had gone. Through the dense lace curtains, the snow was beginning to whirl down more thickly, and it imparted to the room a
curious insulated silence, as if it were a room in which a dear friend had been laid out after death. If I stay quiet enough will I hear one last forbidden sigh?

Effie realised, with a sensation of light-headedness, that she could now control the course of her own life: that her dreams, if she wanted them to, could actually come alive. All it took to make the future happen was to decide that it would. All it took to start on her great adventure was to pack her travelling-bag, and persuade her father to buy her a train ticket for London.

She saw herself in the sombre measled mirror over the sideboard: a white-faced young girl in a severe black Sunday dress with a tight black lace bodice, and a white lace collar. In the stillness of that snowbound room, she could have been nothing more than a portrait of herself, a lost princess, or a future queen.

Effie's mother called, This will do far enough, thank you, Russell,' and the coachman reigned in the horses and drew the brougham over to the curb. He climbed down from his box, with snow heaped like epaulets on the shoulders of his green waterproof cape, and sparkling on his green coachman's bonnet, and he opened the door for them, and lowered the step.

‘You'll be a while, Mrs Watson?' he asked. He was a bitter-faced man with shaggy eyebrows and a close black beard, and he had been driving the Watson family and grooming their horses for over eight years. A good man, from Falkirk, where men kept silent unless they were directly asked, and even then they gave only the barest essential in reply.

It was freezing cold outside, and Effie was sorry that she had to discard the warm brougham blanket, and step down on to the wind-snaked snow of Lawnmarket, the steep cobbled approach to the castle gates. But her mother, without waiting for her, began to walk briskly up the hill, her long black fur-lined cape swirling around her, her hands clasped
tight in front of her in a fox-fur muffler, and Effie had to pick up her skirts and hurry after her, her tiny black lace-up boots slipping on the ice.

‘Mother, wait!' she panted, but her mother kept on walking as quickly and as certainly as before. Effie glanced back, over her shoulder, to see what Russell thought of her mother's extraordinary hurrying-off, but Russell was standing quite at ease beside the brougham's team of four, one hand grasping the bridle of the lan'-afore, the first horse, and Effie realised then that her mother was making haste with a purpose, and that Russell, and presumably Jeanie, too, must be quite aware of what this purpose was. Her mother must have paid them both well for their seamless silence at home; but then her mother was always as generous with her affection as she was with her purse, and that must have counted for more than twal penny worth.

‘Mother, where are we going? Do we have to rush so?'

Her mother turned and stared at her, red-cheeked, as if she didn't recognise who she was. But then she smiled, and reached out her hand, and said, ‘I'm sorry, Effie. But I had no way of warning you. I can only show you.'

‘Warn me? Warn me of what?'

They were entering the gates of the castle itself now, and climbing the wide esplanade. The flag was dolefully flapping at half-mast from St Margaret's Chapel, high at the top of the castle, and the two sentries who stood on duty by the inner gates wore grey coats and black armbands, in mourning for their dead queen. Behind them, the ramparts of the castle rose up into the grim Sunday afternoon sky in a succession of harsh shouldering blocks; as if its skyline had been designed as a stage set for
Die Walkiire
, by Wagner; or some clashing Nordic tragedy about the war between gods and men. There was nothing elegant or decorative about it; no hint of pageantry or medieval fantasy. It was a craggy rock; upon a craggy rock.

Fiona Watson took her daughter by the hand and led her up the curving cobble path. Within the castle precincts, the fresh snow had already begun to melt, and the trickling of water accompanied their echoing footsteps as they climbed to the first rampart, overlooking the city.

Effie said, ‘It's snowing again, mother. We shouldn't be long.'

Her mother didn't answer, but went across to the crenellated wall, and looked out over Edinburgh, with her muffler held up tight to her chin, and said, ‘Look. The city. How dreary it is. How drear.'

Below them, Princes Street Gardens were draped in snow; and the winding paths which led up through the gardens to the foot of the castle looked as if they had been marked by the spoor of unknown animals. Boys slid and tumbled and tobogganed down the garden banks, but their cries and laughter were muted by the fresh snow which was already beginning to spin more thickly through the skies, and whisper insistently on the stonework. The locusts of winter.

Fiona Watson said, ‘I've spent thirty good years of my life here. Look at it. Edinburgh. Grey and snooty; cold as a curling-rink.'

From the west, from Lothian Road and Shandwick Place, the snow came tumbling in over the rooftops. From the north, from the Georgian squares of the New Town, from Queen Street and George Street and Moray Place, where they spoke with that clipped nasal Edinburgh precision, and always made sure that there were buttery rowies for tea, arose the smoke of a thousand coal fires; from grand steel fireplaces in magnificent drawing-rooms; from guarded nursery grates; and from the mean small fires allowed to governesses, and maids, three scoops of coal the week.

To the east, barely visible through the smoke, stood Calton Hill, and on its summit the half-finished model of the Parthenon which Charles Cockerell had designed to honour the Scottish soldiers killed in the Napoleonic Wars. On a clearer day, you could look from Calton Hill northwards to the chilly blue waters of the Forth; and then back westwards to the castle, to the reddish-grey ramparts on which Effie and her mother now stood, cold, and half-abandoned by their own fate.

‘Mother, we ought to be going,' urged Effie. It was not that she really wanted to go. It was just that her mother frightened her, being so silent and so cryptic.

‘Not yet,' said Fiona Watson. ‘Have patience, my dearie. We were a little early.'

Two or three more minutes passed, and Effie stood beside her mother with freezing feet, blinking against the daudinshowers of snow, and wondering if everything she
had said to Dougal was wrong. Perhaps her father was right and her mother was soft in the head. Perhaps everything that she had believed about her mother was wrong; and all of her grown-up years she had been doing nothing but protecting a woman who was weak, and erratic, and a burden that her father was quietly heroic to bear.

The flag on the chapel flaffed in the wind; the cries of the children echoed across the whirly slopes of the castle gardens. But then, quite suddenly, he was there, standing beside them, a neat-looking man of forty in a brown tweed coat and a cream-coloured Shetland scarf, thin-faced but good-looking, with a small clipped moustache, and brown eyes that were a little wider and a little more gentle than a man's eyes ought to have been.

He said, ‘Fiona?' and held out his hand for her.

Effie's mother closed her eyes and reached out for him without even turning her head in his direction. ‘Jamie,' she said, scarcely moving her lips.